Day Six – Minnesota Trip

Our vacation is coming to an end too soon.  I am surely not ready to leave in 2 days.  Today was another fun day!  We visited three more state parks in the area.  First we headed to Carlos Lake State Park.  The fall colors are disappearing now, but the park was still beautiful.  We are feeling all the additional exercise we’ve had in the past days in our legs now.  When we were walking, I just didn’t feel as “robust” about it.  Since we’ve had more exercise than usual over the past 4-5 days, it doesn’t surprise me that we are feeling this way! 

After Carlos Lake State Park we went into Alexandria, MN.  We went through the downtown area which seems to be thriving.  We got lunch and then had enough time to check out a used book store (which of course we found 3 books!) and also stopped at a large antique store.  We left and went on our way to Glacial Lakes Park.  Along the way we noticed an extreme change in geography.  We went from flat roads, lined with hardwoods and pines and sandy soil to rolling hills, black top soil, and more farm field than trees.  We learned at Glacial Lakes State Park that we were in an area that was created by glaciers that came down out of the north a hundreds of thousands of years ago.  I learned the difference between a kettle and a kame and how they were created.   Although the lesson was interesting, this park was just okay.  We left, got ice cream cones from Dairy Queen (circa 1956) in Starbuck, MN and headed to our third stop, Charles Lindberg State Park.

 Along the way we went through Sauk Centre, MN where we saw a clock shop.  As many know, we have a cuckoo clock and Tim has found himself interested in cuckoo’s since we bought that one (on our 1 year anniversary oddly) so we quick stopped  at this clock shop.  Upon entering we found the clockmaker/repairman and a room full of clocks, clock parts, tools, etc.  We talked to the clock man for some time and found out that some of the clocks he handcarved, one was selling for $10,000! (It was about the size of a grandfather clock.) He took us into another room with many more clocks…it was his living room, the shop was part of his house.  It was interesting to talk to him, however we didn’t buy.  We went on our way to Lindberg State Park where we hiked some more and saw Lindberg’s home.  We were pretty tired, so we came back to the rental had dinner and are watching “The Office.”  Tomorrow will be the final adventures of our trip – we are going out to Fargo!